Phelan, Macum, 1874-1950 (Personal Name)

History of early Methodism in Texas, 1817-1866, 1924: t.p. (Macum Phelan)

BL RS&CD, 8 Apr. 1999 (born 1874)

Texas State Historical Association, via WWW, July 16, 2015 (Phelan, Macum; Phelan, Macum (1874-1950); minister and writer; born on a farm near Trenton, Tennessee on February 22, 1874; at age sixteen, he traveled to Waco, Texas, to join two older brothers; he worked as a cowhand on a McLennan County ranch to earn money to attend the University of Texas; after receiving the required certificate, he spent six years teaching in one-room McLennan County schools and returning to the university for summer sessions; Phelan bought the Moody Courier in 1900 and spent two years as editor of the weekly newspaper; he sold the newspaper and returned to the University of Texas, this time to study for the ministry; his first appointment in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South was to the Westbrook circuit in 1904; Phelan was ordained a deacon in 1907 and an elder in 1909; he served pastorates in Roscoe (1906-1908), Baird (1912), Chillicothe (1913-1915), Childress (1920-1923), Big Spring (1924-1925), Sacramento, California (1926), Yuba City, California (1931), Hamilton, Texas (1932), Crawford (1936), and Haslet (1937-1939); at intervals during the same period he was presiding elder of the Vernon, Texas, district (1916-1919) and the Sacramento district (1927-1930); he was business manager of Stamford College (1909-1910), Conference Missionary Secretary (1911), and field editor and later assistant editor of the Southwestern Advocate, Dallas (1932-1935); he was a member of the summer school faculties of Southwestern University (1913-1916) and Southern Methodist University (1917-1923), and he also taught at the Epworth League Assembly in Mount Hermon, California (1926-1927); beginning in 1917 he researched and wrote a two-volume history of the Methodist Church in Texas-History of Methodism in Texas: Early Methodism in Texas, 1817-1866 (1924), and History of Methodism in Texas: The Expansion of Methodism in Texas, 1867-1902 (1937); he was also the editor of A Handbook of All Denominations, first published in 1915, revised and expanded in the sixth and seventh editions (1930 and 1933) into A New Handbook of All Denominations; he retired from the church in 1939 and died of a brain tumor in Fort Worth on August 25, 1950)